Based on your scenario, it should done by your membership extension if the user switch to another subscription or expired.

In Easysocial, you have to create a few profile type for example :

1. Premium Members
- Joomla user group set to 'Premium members'

2. Gold Members
- Joomla user group set to 'Gold members'

3. Expired members
- Joomla user group set to 'non-members'

I assume you have created following member subscription plan :

1. Premium subscriptions
2. Gold subscriptions
3. Free subscriptions

When the user subscribed into this subscription 'Premium subscriptions', this will automatically assigned to Easysocial profile type (Premium Members) and auto assigned to the expected Joomla user group as well.

When the user expired to manually switch that subscription to another subscription, this will automatically switch the Easysocial profile type and the Joomla user group as well.

Currently I am not really sure how your site membership work or did it can integrate with Easysocial? If yes, perhaps you can consult with this membership extension developer and see if they can do something about this.

Based on what i know, our Payplans extension can integration with Easysocial very well.

It's aMember that I use for the membership system which is pretty feature rich....if done directly from aMember will just have to work on a custom plugin to integrate with ES. I have way too many subscribers to switch to a different membership solution like PayPlan for there is no real good way to import/convert data to PayPlan from another system that I see. aMember is actually controlling membership directly at the phpBB forum creating users as registered with new and continued active subscriptions and setting them to an expired group within phpBB when users subscriptions are expired. It's really just the two groups outside of guests who are never registered users. In integrating the forum with Joomla I use p8pBB bridge which is a very well done script that automatically associates groups from phpBB into Joomla....actually, it's a two way bridge. Since I am using ES's login system site-wide whether a user has an active subscription or expired subscription they need to be able to log in so I can utilize Joomlas access levels within groups....expired users are recognized from logging in so I can use the expired access level as a way to publish a module or two just for them as a reminder that they are expired and to renew before deleted if desired. Other components I'm working with I'm also able to control certain levels of access to based on the Joomla groups access level leaving me with ES to figure out.

You're right that ideally aMember would be a good way to go but since everything is being changed down the line from aMembers direct access to phpBB and it's internal groups and the ability of the p8pBB bridge to then take those changes and incorporate them into Joomlas user group system I'm leery of a direct "plugin" from aMember to ES. Actually, now that I typed it out perhaps an additional "hook" from the bridge to ES may be best. The bridge already has some ES integration so it may also not be something having to code from scratch.

Thanks for being my sounding board....sometimes I just have to walk myself through. It's really not an ES issue though it would be a nice feature(if you all want a suggestion ) to add the option within ES to change a users profile type based on Joomlas user groups instead of the current need to manually change it.
thanks again.

You're welcome Steve.

Yes, it would be good if aMember plan to create a plugin for this integration with Easysocial, so it will solve this issue who use this aMember membership with Easysocial.

By the way, thanks for your input.